“I’ve been waiting all this time for you to wake and have tea,” she said, placing the pot and the toast on the table. “Now then, see if you can’t sit up and have some.”
“I couldn’t drink any, thank you,” I said faintly.
“Such stuff and nonsense! It’s quite fresh, and I’ve put in some extra as Miss Hetty give me. Come now, sit up and try, there’s a dear.”
I tried to sit up, but the pain was so great that I sank back, having hard work not to cry out; and seeing this, with a tenderness for which I should not have given her credit, she gently raised me and backed the pillows up, so as to support me; and then, finding that this was not sufficient, she ran out of the kitchen, to return in a few minutes, doubling up what I knew was her best shawl, which she now formed into a cushion.
“There, now we shall do,” she said cheerily; and, pouring out a cup of tea, she tasted and added milk till it was to her liking, and then held it to my lips.
It was like nectar, and I gave her a grateful look for that which seemed to impart new life to my bruised body.
“Now, you’ve got to eat some toast,” she said, and I stared at her in wonder, for it seemed to be a new Mary upon whom I gazed.
“I couldn’t eat a bit,” I said helplessly.
“But you must,” she said imperatively. “Now look here, you have had hardly anything since breakfast, and if you don’t eat, you can’t get well.”
I took the toast she held to me, and managed to eat it. That done, I had another cup of tea, and the sickly faint feeling I had had every time I moved seemed less overpowering; and at last I lay back there, listening helplessly to Mary as she chatted to me and washed up the tea-things.